


Gifts

by Mitsuky



Series: Awakening [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Gifts, Happy likes Dawtown Abbey, Overprotective Tony, Papabear Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24559465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mitsuky/pseuds/Mitsuky
Summary: Tony finds the time to finally get those gifts he wanted to give to his friends.Because anyone who puts up with Tony Stark deserves an extra-awesome reward with a card saying 'Thank you for your patience'. He knows how hard it is to keep up with him.Also, Fury makes an unannounced house call and angers Tony with his methods. He'll get a different sort of gift from Tony for his troubles...
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark
Series: Awakening [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1769674
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of fluff for you guys. I love overprotective Tony making an apparition and getting all worked up in Jarvis' defence.

A few days after the Adam’s debacle, Rhodey visits and the two of them go down to the workshop with excitement bubbling out of the Colonel. The TV is on and a journalist moves their mouth but it’s muted so no sound comes off, the image of Iron-Man appears and a second later Tony’s picture is beside it while the reporters keep talking in a little corner of the screen. The bold letters of the title read: Tony Stark’s last stunt, from billionaire to superhero. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the name. Iron-Man. It’s somewhat catchy...even though it’s much more than simple _iron_ , but he doesn’t really feel like correcting them about that; it reminds him a little of Yinsen after all.

“That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rhodey comments while admiring the Mark III.

“And you haven’t seen it in its perfect, just finished, shining glory,” Tony says and sits in his chair in front of the screens. “J, show our dear Colonel my latest design.” A hologram flashes to life from a console closer to Rhodey and the man looks in awe, “What do you think, Platypus? Do you like it?”

The glint in his best friend’s eyes is that of a kid in a candy store and Tony loves it. “Oh, I like it just fine. You outdid yourself this time, Tones.”

Tony smirks, “Good because I have something _special_ to show you.”

Rhodey walks next to him with a curious gaze and stares at the screen when it pops up with a different Iron-Man model. The paint is matte silver and black, the design bulkier, and the name flashing to the side says War Machine Mark I. “That’s… i-is that for me?”

“Do you still like it? I could add a few things-” Rhodey hugs him tightly and Tony returns the embrace with a pleased hum.

“I love you, bro.”

“Me too. I love myself. Aren’t I amazing?”

Rhodey releases him with a chuckle, “Your ego is showing, Tones.”

The two spend the rest of the evening, aided by pizza and coke, talking about the suit and what Rhodey wants to add to his own. He’s a member of the USAF and will bring it with him to missions so, of course, Tony has to make him sign a contract in the hypothetical case of the USAF trying to get fresh with his technology. He trusts his friend, but not the military, much less the government and politics. They are a sleazy bunch in the best of situations, so he has to protect himself.

The armour ends up with more ammo than Tony deems it necessary, but it’s Rhodey’s choice so he just bears it and by midnight Rhodey leaves since he has to return to service early in the morning. Tony accompanies him out, returning to his living room to find Fury standing there with his long leather coat and black eyepatch, trying to intimidate him.

“I think I missed the notification for our meeting, Number Two, because I wasn’t expecting-”

“I am Iron-Man,” the man says, interrupting Tony. Rude! “As if gamma accidents, radioactive bug bites, and assorted mutants weren’t enough,” he said. “I have to deal with a spoiled brat who doesn’t play well with others and wants to keep all his toys to himself.” Tony snorts because Fury calling _him_ a brat is quite funny. He’s hardly younger than the man. “Do you think this is funny?”

Tony nods, trying to contain his snickers, “Yep, I do.”

“You have no idea what you’ve got involved in yet, Stark. This is bigger-”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. The universe is pretty complicated. I’m sure I'm not the only one capable of amazing things.”

“Then why did you blow up your own cover?!”

Tony stares at the man with the patience of the world in his gaze. He sits on the couch without preamble and relaxes, “I simply didn’t want to owe you anything. I don’t like being indebted with others, much less shady agencies I know next to nothing about,” or, well, knows little for his tastes.

“We are not your enemy, Stark. SHIELD’s work is that of an international peacekeeping, law enforcement, and counter-terrorism agency, sanctioned by the United Nations.”

“I’ll take your word for it, but that doesn’t mean I have to trust the rest of your minions being as noble as you… although, I think Coulson’s fine.”

Fury glares, sighs, and changes the subject, “Anyway, I’m not here to appease your trust issues, I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative…”

* * *

Once Fury is far away from the mansion, Tony calls for Jarvis as he returns to the workshop. The garbled answer that comes from the speakers makes his blood boil.

And good thing Fury isn’t there at the moment.

“What did they DO to you?!” Tony asks without expecting an answer, looking at the screen with horror.

Jarvis’ coding was a _mess_!

In his panic, it takes more time than it should to fix the problem. Once he finds the virus and understands what is doing, he’s able to breath easier, but still, the anger persists.

**They will rue the day they touched his son!**

The virus has the purpose of disabling Jarvis by displacing the coding, returning everything to its original place four hours later, but leaving a backdoor for SHIELD to look into it and hack Tony’s servers at will. With a cold detachment that he hasn’t felt in a long time, Tony obliterates the remnants of the virus, fixes Jarvis’ coding, get’s rid of the backdoor, and puts all of his efforts into hacking SHIELD next.

Aunt Peggy, his lovely, lovely aunt, left a code for him many years ago to use in case of an emergency. Tony considers this, SHIELD daring to harm his SON, a Goddamn emergency. And uses the code, accessing SHIELD’s files with the highest level access possible, getting a quick glimpse of whatever the agency is doing at the time, while planning his revenge.

What he finds is not at all what he expected…

He weeps for his aunty. All her dreams, hopes and expectations for SHIELD lie in from of Tony in ashes after he finishes reading through their data.

SHIELD? Ha, what a lie! This is more like SHIELDRA.

He decides then to forgive Fury’s first mistake and give the man a second chance. If he can fix SHIELD, Tony will show restrain and left bygones be bygones.

Tony creates a backdoor for personal use, better than anything else they can handle, detect, or ever dream of getting rid of, and leaves the servers intact beyond that.

He doesn’t go to sleep before making sure Jarvis feels alright one more time.

* * *

The next Monday, Tony is up early and waiting for Pepper before the sun shines in the horizon. They have a busy schedule programmed for the day and dance from meeting to meeting with practised ease.

Since she lives mid-way between Tony’s mansion and the SI installation, it takes little to no time to convince her about having a pizza and beer at his place that night, and he avoids telling her the exact reason he wants her to visit.

They sit in front of the tv and laugh as they watch Ellen’s show, she eats her half of the pizza with arugula—Tony shivers looking at it—and cheese, while he enjoys his half of classic pepperoni.

They are relaxed as can be and the show is about to finish, so Tony sends a message with his Starkphone and U comes out of the elevator he put in the mansion with only his kids in mind, a minute later.

“Don’t look,” Tony warns Pepper before she turns at the sound of the elevator’s door opening, his smile erasing any worry from her mind, “Just close your eyes and hold your hands out. U has a little something for you.”

“Really, Tony?” Pepper smirks at him with a huff, but her eyes are warm before she closes them. Her hands raise in the air next, waiting.

Tony motions for U to leave the gift in Pepper’s hands and the bot complies, rolling off a little bit afterwards to observe her reaction. It wasn’t only Tony who put the effort into choosing and then making the gift, U also helped with the design as he likes Pepper the most.

When Pepper had the box in her hands, her eyes opened and her smile widened. She untied the pink bow from the box and opened the lid, a hand rushing to cover the gasp that escaped her mouth at the sight.

“Oh my God! They’re beautiful, Tony, thank you,” she says, and her eyes almost sparkle with emotion when they land on him.

Since Pepper doesn’t like using rings, Tony decided to create a set of earrings and a necklace for her. She’s an expensive woman in the aspect that she doesn’t like any metals but white-gold, but at the same time her favourite gemstone, pink quartz, isn’t expensive at all; a very weird woman, and Tony loves her none the less for it.

“U picked the design after searching on the internet for hours, while I made them. Do you like your gift?”

“Yes, very much so, thank you,” and her smiles turned from him to U at her right, “Thank you, U. They’re perfect.”

U chirped and his claw rolled as Pepper patted the bot. Then she turned back to him and took the delicate chain of the necklace, offering it to him. He helped to clasp it around her neck and liked the end result when she turned and the pink orb hung right on the small ‘u’ created by the top of her sternum. Afterwards, she exchanged the two white pearls on her ears with the new quartz earrings of the same design, leaving the second model of the earrings, that will hang from two chains on the front and back of her ears when she puts them, inside the box.

“I know you prefer the small and round earrings, but I thought you may want to use the extra set in a gala or something. U insisted I make them.”

Pepper took a look at U, who was nodding with his claw, and smiled. “I’ll make sure to use them next time then, and you can see how they look.” U nodded more insistently and chirped happily.

“Also,” Tony added with a shameless smile, “At the end of your necklace, there is a device that you can activate by pressing it if you’re in danger. It sends a signal to Jarvis.”

“Tony!” Pepper rolled her eyes with fondness.

* * *

The fifth of December, Happy drove them to the airport, packed and ready to accompany his Boss on a ‘business trip’ to London. But, when he stopped the car close to the jet and opened the trunk, there was only _his_ suitcase in there. Where was Boss’s?

“Well?” Tony called after getting off the car.

“Boss, where is your bag?” Happy asked taking his own out and handing it to the help.

“My bag?” Tony turned with a mischievous smile, “Why would I need one?”

“I don’t unders…”

“ _I’m_ not going anywhere,” Tony commented, and Happy gaped. Seriously, he should be used by now to Tony’s crazy stunts. “You, on the other hand, my dear Happy. You’re going to London for a well-deserved holiday.”

Happy tried to complain, opening his mouth ready to do so. He has lots of obligations to oversee, what with being chief of security of the tower? Besides, who is going to make sure everyone follows the rules, have their tags on them, and no one jumps their allotted training time every day?

But, of course, Tony wouldn’t hear any of it and silenced his faithful friend with a raised finger.

“I’m not hearing any complains. I got you a free pass to visit the set of that series you like so much-”

Happy gasped, “Downtown Abbey?!”

“-and to meet the cast, so you can’t say no to it-”

Happy engulfed him in a sudden and tight hug, thanking him profusely. Tony returned it with a laugh.

“You’re the best, Boss!” Happy skipped off and up to the jet.

“Have fun buddy!”


End file.
